Opinion Blog

Dwaine Caraway’s instincts are right, but his plastic bag plan is a bit off-kilter

I absolutely agree with my board mate Mike Hashimoto that a ban on plastic bags will have costs to consumers. City Councilman Dwaine Caraway, while well-intentioned, is being a bit naive if he truly thinks the city can enact a ban on single-use plastic bags without consumers paying a trickle-down price.

However, to think about this issue as consumer choice, an anti litter campaign aren’t the most productive ways to discuss a much larger environmental issue — that the nation is using plastic and paper bags at unsustainable rates.

Ironically, the nation began a major shift from paper bags to plastic bags in the mid 1970s — on environmental grounds. Supposedly, we were killing too many trees and some touted plastic bags as an alternative even though plastic bags sit in landfills forever. Stores switched because plastic bags were cheaper than paper bags, which also posed other environmental issues, such as the amount of water and energy used to make them.

Caraway’s proposal, which tracks recently adopted bans on single-use plastic bags in other cities, simply isn’t the most effective way to curb litter. Plus, Dallas hasn’t come close to laying out the broader environmental argument to earn public buy-in for a program that consumers will find inconvenient, at least at first..

So before it enacts a ban on single-use plastic bags, Dallas should continue to push recycling and cleanup efforts, especially in those neighborhoods where loose plastic bags are major problems. This is a community level issue that goes far beyond plastic bags.

Also, I’d like the city to see what it can learn from its experience with recycling and trash pickup before it singles out plastic bags as the greatest litter threat. As to neighborhood cleanliness, I see no real difference between a McDonald’s bag on the street or a plastic bag stuck in a tree.

Longer term, I’d like to see all of us rethink out attitudes toward consumption, waste and convenience. Unless technology advances bail us out, the time will come when more of us will shop with reusable cloth bags instead of paper or plastic bags.

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The Dallas Morning News Editorial Board was the first editorial board in the nation to use a blog to openly discuss hot topics and issues among its members and with readers. Our intent is to pull back the curtain on the daily process of producing the unsigned editorials that reflect the opinion of the newspaper, and to share analysis and opinion on issues of interest to board members and invited guest bloggers.